Comprising members of Holland's psychedelic rock-jazz-gothic hybrid outfit The Legendary Pink Dots, and cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy, The Tear Garden was born of a meeting of the two artists in 1985 following engineering and tour sound work by Key for Edward Ka-Spel. Their first collaboration, a self-titled EP was soon followed by "Tired Eyes Slowly Burning" for the Canadian label Nettwerk, home to Skinny Puppy, Severed Heads, and Front Line Assembly, and featured contributions from Skinny Puppy members Dwayne Goettel, Nivek Ogre, and David Ogilvie. Outside of Key and Ka-Spel, the project was a rotating array of guest musicians presenting sounds and structural and stylistic variables far-ranging and outside of the parameters of Skinny Puppy's electro-industrial sound. Progressive rock, kosmische synth explorations, and longform, more abstract loosely structured instrumental passages found a home in the project, distinguishing it significantly from Key's industrial work with Skinny Puppy and Legendary Pink Dots then-forays into electronic music, jazz and dub. They have continued their musical explorations over the years, largely released on cEvin Key's label SubConscious Communications and more recently, as "Astral Elevator" for Canadian label, Autoffact. The label has taken the mantle from Nettwerk, as they are now the current home to Key's discography and the work of other projects that resided there like Key's Download project and Front Line Assembly. Continuing this string of recent activity, a first-ever tour was announced with an initial date at this year's edition of Cold Waves festival in Chicago, with a month of performances bracketing the festival on both coasts of the United States. This year's Cold Waves lineup runs the gamut from early electro-industrial stalwarts like Pig, 16 Volt, Lead into Gold and Stabbing Westward, and more contemporary synthwave and electronic work like that of TR/ST and Die Sexual, as well as noise-rock and brutalist industrial offshoots heard from King Woman and Youth Code.
